Nikki and Ashlyn were in Florence. And it seemed like another world to Nikki. The young women had arrived two hours ago and had dropped off their luggage at the apartment of Elizabeth's distant relative, Marco. Marco had made his fortune by programming an app with some techies that could track the spread of computer viruses without disclosing personal data. The whole thing worked using blockchain technology, on which the cryptocurrency coin was also based. Nikki didn't understand exactly what was going on. Tonight, he had to go on to Singapore to pitch his project in Asia, as it was called in the start-up industry. But now he still had an hour to show the two young women around.

"It's great that we can use your apartment," said Ashlyn enthusiastically.

"And you know," Nikki said with a frown, "that we're happy to pay you rent for it." She looked out of the window. "The location is perfect."

"Yes, it is," said Marco, "just a bit noisy sometimes, but it's right next to the cathedral; you can even hear the bells from the roof terrace. Via Giraldi, on the corner of dei Pandofini. My financial advisor advised me to buy the property. He didn't consider the Italian craftsmen because the kitchen still isn't finished, and without a kitchen, it's difficult to rent out anyway."

"Airbnb at best," Ashlyn replied.

"Yes, but there's a big risk that some boozehounds will come, and the place will be unrecognizable afterward. The kitchen is the least of my problems. No, it's fine."

"It's not a problem with the kitchen anyway," said Nikki. "We're eating out; isn't that what Italians do anyway?"

"That's right. We Italians don't even have breakfast at home. We go to a bar and drink espresso and eat a cornetto. Dinner is at 8:30 p.m. at the earliest. It's not as bad as the Spanish, but much later than the Americans." He looked at the two women. "Let's go."

Ashlyn and Nikki nodded.

They strolled down Via Giraldi and approached the Duomo. The Piazza del Duomo, the square in front of the cathedral, had been cleared of traffic and its dirty alleys for years, making it easier to stroll and the white marble façade of the cathedral shine again. Nevertheless, the cathedral had been restored a few times, and most people didn't know that a large part of the façade had only been completed in the 19th century.

"It's best to go around the corner to Pegna," said Marco, "it's more of a posh supermarket with great gourmet food. It's nothing for the big appetite, but it's delicious. The Casa di Dante, where Dante lived, is also nearby."

"It's prominent here," grinned Ashlyn.

"Yes, the neighborhood was also called the artists' quarter, between Santa Croce and the cathedral, because artists and restorers used to live there."

"But the prices aren't very artist-friendly now, are they?" Nikki replied with furrowed brows.

Marco looked at her for a long time. "Not at all; that's why my bank advisor thought I should buy this apartment. But the area is great, even if it is a bit noisy. Behind it is the Palazzo del Bargello, a museum that used to be the city prison." He winked at Nikki. "It fits your job."

Nikki lowered her brows. "Just stop it." For once, the officer didn't want to hear about murder and manslaughter. One reason to flee to Florence was the constant calls from the press. Apart from a few exceptions where she recognized the numbers, she no longer answered her cell phone. She instinctively pulled her smartphone out of her jeans pocket. Another ten calls in her absence. Mostly Boston and cell phone numbers. She felt a pang in her stomach. Was she doing the right thing here? First, turning a young woman into a murderer, having to face the consequences for it, and then fleeing from those consequences to Florence and taking it easy? But would the investigating authorities be more likely to stop Melanie if Nikki wasn't in Florence? Maybe she could help them, but with forced leave, that wasn't easy. Investigating on her own might get her dismissed from the police force. She might as well continue working as a private detective.

"Do they only drink espresso here?" Ashlyn asked with a frown.

"What you Americans call espresso is usually just called caffè here. In the morning, you can also drink cappuccino, another Italian invention named after the Capuchin monks, because the milk foam crown looks a bit like a hood. Cappuccino is only drunk until eleven o'clock. Anyone who drinks one after that is a materialist."

"And why cappuccino only until eleven a.m.?"

"That comes from the time when fresh milk was used in coffee. The cows were milked, the milk was brought in, and there were no fridges yet, so the milk had to be processed or drunk by eleven o'clock.

They had reached the Piazza del Duomo.

"Wow!" Nikki said as she looked up at the cathedral.

Marco smiled a little. "Never seen it before?"

"It's been ages," the officer replied.

The cathedral rose in front of them.

"It's considered one of the buildings of the Renaissance," Marco explained. "It was built over several centuries. Similar to the Cologne Cathedral in Germany. It could fit twenty thousand people. The campanile on the right, built by Giotto, was intended to be the largest and most magnificent tower of its time. In any case, the master builders were much more creative than they are today."

Nikki blinked a few times. "In the construction?"

"And in the waste disposal, too. They got kids to take out the trash."

The officer furrowed her eyebrows. "So, child labor?"

Marco nodded slowly. "They didn't care back then. But people respond to incentives, as the economists say. They hid coins in the piles of rubble, and the garbage was gone in no time."

"And the dome?" asked Ashlyn. "What was that guy's name ... Bruno --"

"The guy," Marco replied with mock offense, "was called Brunelleschi. He had a lot of trouble building a dome like that at first. In the Gothic period, people knew how to build upwards but needed to learn how to support such domes. Brunelleschi then went to Rome and studied the ancient ruins, maps, and writings, especially the Pantheon, which also has a huge dome. And then he somehow managed it."

"Renaissance," Nikki murmured, furrowing her brows, "means something like rebirth, doesn't it?"

"Yes, the rediscovery of ancient ideals after the Middle Ages had blurred it all a bit. Hence, the term Middle Ages. As a middle ground between antiquity and modernity. The term Gothic is also meant pejoratively: the Goths had destroyed Rome. That's why everything before the Renaissance was barbaric or Gothic."

"How do you know all this when you program virus distribution apps?" Ashlyn asked in amazement.

"It's a national treasure, you know that as an Italian."

"Bullshit," said Nikki, "most Italians don't know that. Marco studied architecture for two semesters."

Marco grinned broadly. "That's right. Then, I had an MBA at Bocconi in Milan. But architecture also helps if you want to program apps."

Ashlyn pursed her lips. "Do you program them yourself?"

"I know a bit of Python code to have a say, but the programmers do most of it."

"At least someone earns money with their job," Nikki muttered.

"You can't get fired for that, cousin."

"Well, if you do shit like me, you can. Almost, anyway."

"Nikki," Ashlyn said, raising a hand, "cut the crap. We said the police topic is off limits here." She looked ahead. "What the hell is this? Part of the cathedral, too?"

Marco nodded slowly. "Yes, the baptistery, but it's closed at the moment. That's the problem in Italy; you never know what's open when."

Nikki's gaze swept over the vast golden gate, which depicted various stories from the Bible. "A pretty gate!"

"It was built by Ghiberti when the city was freed from the plague in 1401. Everyone loved the doors. At the time, it was one of the first gates made from one piece. It was quicker and cheaper, but not easy. Even Michelangelo, who had nothing good to say about the competition, thought it was worthy of adorning the gates of paradise."

Nikki stepped closer. "Do you know all the scenes?" she wanted to know.

Marco shook his head. "No. But I think this one is Abraham with Isaac. You know the story. He's supposed to sacrifice his son because God tells him to. At the last second, an angel comes and stops Abraham from actually fulfilling God's will and killing his son."

"That's how the serial killers argue, too," Nikki said with a frown. "If what I do isn't right, then God will stop it."

"Nikki," Ashlyn growled, "we don't want to discuss these issues."

Marco grinned broadly. "Are there any serial killers that relate to Abraham and Isaac?"

Nikki nodded slowly. "You wouldn't believe all the things they refer to."

"You'll have to tell me about that." He looked at Ashlyn. "Are we making an exception?"

Nikki took a deep breath and nodded. "Yes, because of me. Right over coffee." These constant horror serial killer questions were getting on her nerves, but she was happy to do it for Marco. "I just hope you still like the coffee then."

"My guess." Marco grinned and looked at his watch. "I have to leave in an hour. Have you got the keys and everything? Then I suggest we have another coffee and chat a bit, and you can take a look at everything over the next few days. Deal?"

Nikki looked at her sister and nodded. "Deal. Can we have coffee in the cathedral square?"

"We can, but it's expensive and touristy. I'd rather go in the direction of Via dei Panfolfini."

xxx

A while later, Nikki and Ashlyn walked back towards the apartment. Marco had lost track of time during their leisurely coffee and entertaining serial killer discussion and had hurried off to the airport.

But the cheerful atmosphere was suddenly almost imperceptibly tense.

"Nikki," Ashlyn whispered. "Did you notice that guy in black outside our apartment?"

A man standing there in a black shirt and jacket was whom she had also seen earlier.

"Of course I did. I may be on forced leave, but I'm not blind."

"What do you think he wants?"

"If he's still there in the morning, we'll ask him!"

xxx

Cosimo de' Medici built the Uffizi Gallery in Florence in the 16th century as the administrative headquarters of the Tuscan government. Therefore, the gallery bore the Italian name for office, which is also derived from the English word office.

Nikki and Ashlyn lingered before a Botticelli painting showing Minerva with a centaur, a hybrid of human and horse. While the officer gazed dreamily at the painting, Ashlyn read aloud from a guidebook about the Uffizi.

"The art of the Florentine Renaissance shaped the entire art of Europe during this period, just as the Florentine dialect of Dante's language became the standard language of Italy."

"I say," Nikki muttered, feeling like she was in a Loriot sketch."

Ashlyn read on. "Botticelli was later a great follower of the Dominican preacher and reformer Savonarola. Dominicans, by the way, are supposed to be called dogs of the Lord, from Domini and Canes."

"Unnecessary knowledge, part ten," growled the officer.

"Botticelli," Ashlyn continued without looking in the guidebook, ignoring Nikki's objection, "his works ended up being too pagan, and he even burned some of his earlier works."

"That reminds me of an old friend at school. She had always listened to heavy metal, then suddenly became ultra-Christian and sold her vinyl records."

"But not destroyed?"

"Not at first. She later bought new vinyl because she couldn't do without heavy metal. In the end, she became ultra-Christian once again, or even more so, and threw away all her vinyl. Not burnt, though. But a bit like this Botticelli."

"Strange metal boycott. The record companies made twice as much money from your friend."

"Botticelli too, perhaps," the officer replied, "if you make your offer scarce, you can demand a higher price. Michelangelo is supposed to have done the same."

Ashlyn looked at the guidebook again. "It says there are some works by Leonardo da Vinci hanging here."

"We can look for them sometime."

"Including the Mona Lisa?"

Nikki slowed down and looked at her sister punitively. "Who's the expert with the guidebook? The Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre in Paris. And it's never on loan."

"And why is it in France? Wasn't Da Vinci Italian?"

"Da Vinci spent the rest of his life in Amboise, France, and bequeathed much to the French crown as a reward. I once had a scholarship for an intensive French course, and that was in Amboise."

"Paris, then," Ashlyn said, "Okay. I know something, though. Some say the Mona Lisa was a mistress of the Medici, but others say it was a gay friend of da Vinci's called Salai. So Mona Lisa is an anagram of Mon Salai - my Salai."

Nikki looked at her sister long and hard and had to grin a little. "I think someone's been reading too much Dan Brown."

Ashlyn slumped her shoulders. "Dan Brown doesn't say that."

They walked past another painting- Jusepe de Ribera with the Flaying of Bartholomew and a copy of Titian with the Flaying of Marsyas next to it. In the painting, the ancient Marsyas had been hung upside down while being cruelly flayed so that he would not lose consciousness, and there was enough blood in his head. The officer thought many horror strategies were depicted in detail in such paintings. They walked on and stopped again before a painting by Botticelli, one of the Uffizi's classics.

"The Birth of Venus," Ashlyn said as if she had painted the picture herself.

"Thank you, but even I recognize it! It's hanging in hundreds of teenage girls' rooms."

"Well, the goddess of beauty." Nikki said an shrugged. "Aphrodite, the Greek name for Venus, means the foam-born. The background on why it's foam isn't so appetizing."

"Why?" Nikki tried to squint at the guidebook.

Ashlyn closed it and frowned a little. "Kronos, the God of time, sabered off the testicles of the god Uranus, a kind of primordial God and his father. A patricide in its original form. He threw the testicles into the sea, and Venus Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, emerged from the foam of the primordial God's seed in a new form."

"The goddess of beauty was created from the balls of an ancient primordial god?" Nikki made a face.

Ashlyn pulled the corners of her mouth down and lifted her shoulders. "Well, there's beauty in all ugliness. That Kronos was a bit weird, anyway. He devoured all his children, too. Some, like Zeus, he luckily spat out again."

"Speaking of spit out," Nikki said, taking a deep breath, "we've been in here for two hours now."

"Are you bored? Or are you, like Ma, one of those museum visitors who race through the collection in five minutes, then buy kitsch and Dalí umbrellas in the museum store and urgently need coffee?"

"I don't need kitsch for now, but coffee. There are lots of cafés in front of the Palazzo Vecchio."

"Didn't Marco say you shouldn't go there because of the high prices and the tourist?"

The officer rolled her eyes and started moving. "I don't care. There's no Palazzo Vecchio where there are no tourists. I need to see something nice now!"

"All right," Ashlyn smiled, "let's go shopping. We can come back here later. And I want to go shopping too."

"That anyway."

xxx

That evening, Nikki looked out of the window. She hadn't seen him during the day, but the man in the black jacket was there again that night. She glanced at her cell phone. Twenty missed calls. She had called Mike, her parents, and her grandparents. She hadn't answer the other calls. There was also a cell phone number with an Italian area code. Was it the Italian press? Or the God of Blood, who wasn't in Spain but here? She hadn't even thought about it yet, but Melanie knew what the officer looked like.

Who told her that the pair of murderers weren't after them? What should she do? Fly back to Boston, call Elizabeth? Or enjoy Florence?

It was a long time before she went to bed that night.